Marple-Poirot-Holmes Challenge

There's nothing quite like hunkering down with an Agatha Christie on a weekend afternoon, and staying on the couch until the whole thing is read. That guilty pleasure has brought me to a new challenge: The Marple, Poirot, and Holmes reading challenge. The requirements are to read two Miss Marple, two Hercule Poirot, and two Sherlock Holmes mysteries in 2010. The Christies will be no problem, and this will be my first foray into Holmes- that's a deficiency I certainly need to rectify. I'm not picking in advance for this one- I'll read whatever strikes me at the time.

Colorful Reading Challenge

It's now the season for me to sign up for many more reading challenges for next year than I will ever be able to finish, so I submit my first: The Colorful Reading Challenge. The requirements are simple: nine books, with nine different colors, in a year. I'm not entirely sure what I'll be choosing, but I'm thinking about:

Blood Orange by Drusilla Campbell
The Red Tent by Anita Diamant
Alentejo Blue by Monica Ali
Black Water by Joyce Carol Oates
The Crimson Petal and the White by Michael Faber
Violet Clay by Gail Godwin
The Secret History of the Pink Carnation by Lauren Willig

I will most certainly be adding others, but that's a starting point.

Green Books Campaign: Medicine Trails by Mavis McCovey

This review is part of the Green Books campaign. Today 100 bloggers are reviewing 100 great books printed in an environmentally friendly way. Our goal is to encourage publishers to get greener and readers to take the environment into consideration when purchasing books. This campaign is organized by Eco-Libris, a a green company working to green up the book industry by promoting the adoption of green practices, balancing out books by planting trees, and supporting green books. A full list of participating blogs and links to their reviews is available on Eco-Libris website.

This memoir tells the story of Mavis McCovey, a Karuk medicine woman and health care advocate. It also tells us much more than the story of McCovey offering broad discussion of her life and land. The result is a fascinating look at Native American spirituality, community, life and labor in northwestern California. Stretching from the early-nineteenth century, we learn the long and broad history of McCovey's family. As the subtitle suggests, McCovey is a woman who has lived in many worlds: through her family, in which her ancestors married and raised families with European partners, to her own marriage, in which she relocated to her husband's Yurok community. Perhaps most importantly, McCovey has also occupied the world of the medicine woman, a role for which she was singled out in childhood, and trained from a young age. By no account has Mavis McCovey had an easy life, physically or emotionally. After losing her own parents at age six, McCovey also lost two of her five children. Work is a constant theme in this memoir, and we see all of the residents of McCovey's community working, and working hard, almost constantly. As a spiritual leader, McCovey has hardly been absent from this labor, and her spiritual leadership is well-grounded in a hardworking community. The tremendous wealth of information on the process of becoming a medicine woman is surely one of this book's strengths. As a woman who lives in many worlds, McCovey does an excellent job of highlighting for the reader the spiritual differences among the communities in which she has lived, showcasing for the reader the significant variety in Native American religious practices, even in close geographic proximity. This book will likewise be valuable to those interested in women's studies, as McCovey reflects on her role as a medicine woman, and as a wife, daughter, and mother in the Karuk and Yurok communities. This text is narrated by McCovey, literally, in that it was told to the anthropologist John Salter (McCovey's co-author), who offered annotations. Salter has presented McCovey's words as they were told to him. This presents certain benefits, clearly in that we hear directly and mostly unmediated from McCovey. It also presents challenges. As a spoken history, the style of narration is somewhat different from what most readers may be accustomed to- this is a book that sometimes begs to be read out loud, to offer full appreciation of the style. In sum, this is a very interesting book, which offers information not necessarily available elsewhere. Blurbers described this book as a "definitive text," and I would agree. I would use this book in the classroom without hesitation. McCovey's story has taught me a great deal.

Review: Murder at Hazelmoor

A murder in a tiny Dartmoor village in the dead of winter sets the stage for this classic Christie whodunit. Several had a motive, few had an opportunity. The most likely suspect is quickly imprisoned, but his fiance remains unsatisfied with the law's conclusions. Determined to clear James Pearson's name, Emily Trefusis sets off with intrepid newspaper reporter Charles Enderby to seek out the circumstances of Major Treveylan's murder. As with all of Christie's books, we get plenty of atmosphere as the plot unfolds in the Dartmoor countryside. Here we see the deepest depths of winter. This novel has all of the elements of a juicy, quick read. The plot and suspense build as we follow Emily on her quest for answers. This is classic Christie- a bit of brain-fluff, for sure, but engaging and well-written.

Agatha Christie, Murder at Hazelmoor (Putnam, 1987) ISBN: 0396090133

Review: Easy to Kill

It's easy to kill if no one suspects you, and in the situation Luke Fitzwilliam has wandered into, that seems to be the case. A series of deaths has mostly gone unnoticed-- unfortunate accidents, they seemed, but not to everyone. Lavinia Fullerton has suspicions and premonitions, but she is run down on her way to alert the authorities. After hearing Lavinia's story retired police office Luke Fitzwilliam decides to do a bit of investigating of his own. He finds a small town with a variety of eccentricities. In some ways, this novel follows the typical Christie pattern: murder, a variety of suspects, and an unsuspected conclusion. This particular Christie has more of an element of danger, however, which adds excitement. We actually get to see some action, not just the detective revealing his or her conclusions at the end. Christie has also been successful in underlining the fact that apparently, it is remarkably easy to kill (or at least it was in the days before DNA evidence and whatnot.)

Agatha Christie, Easy to Kill (Pocket Books, 1945) ISBN: 0671811282

Review: Jewels

I must admit, I am captivated by jewels: their shine, their brilliance, their color. Thus, I was excited to read a history of jewels. Finlay's is a social history, examining how human beings have constructed the value of brilliant minerals. This is not a comprehensive study. Finlay has chosen a series of case studies, the research for which took her all over the globe, from Australia, to Russia, to Sri Lanka, to the American southwest. This is quite an interesting book, and it certainly does show that these stones that human beings so treasure have no inherent value. This is evident in the changing fortunes of so many stones, which have variously fallen in and out of favor. It also becomes clear through the course of Finlay's work, that stones have, and do, cause a tremendous amount of human suffering. Indeed, in the long history of gems there has been much more misery than fortune. Finlay's history is clearly narrative in nature. She is concerned with telling some of the most interesting stories behind the jewels. It is not a book that analyzes the larger social forces behind many of these changes. Still, this is an interesting book. Finlay gained access to many places most people cannot. She travelled to some of the most unforgiving parts of the world in search of the people who mine, cut, and sell valuable stones. Any jewelry-lover will likely find this book engaging.

Victoria Finlay, Jewels: A Secret History (Random House, 2007), ISBN: 0345466950

Review: Dark Places

Libby Day, the sole survivor of a murderous massacre that killed her family, has spent the rest of her life trying to avoid that night. Her brother is imprisoned for the crime. Libby has become a dysfunctional adult, and having exhausted her trust fund, finds herself in need of money. Her rather unorthodox solution is to investigate the night of the murders funded by the Kill Club, a group of crime junkies. In the process Libby is brought into contact with all the horrors of that fateful January night. In the process Libby finds herself reevaluating everything she thought she knew about the crime. She also digs deeper than she ever anticipated and finds herself coming too close to a murderer still on the loose. This was a gripping story. It kept me invested from start to finish. The mix of thriller and literary fiction was refreshing- I like a good thriller, but I also want good writing, and this book definitely has both. Flynn offers us plot development, fully rounded characters, and enough suspense to keep the reader on edge.

Gillian Flynn, Dark Places, (Shaye Areheart, 2009) ISBN: 0307341569